PITTSBURGH — It’s perhaps the most famous birthday in all of sports. The man who was born on Aug. 8, 1987 — 8/7/87 — and wears No. 87 and earns a well-calculated $8.7 million annually turned 39 on Friday.

And really, at this point, what is there to write about Sidney Crosby that hasn’t already been written?

We know he’s an extraordinary hockey player, generally considered among the five greatest in the sport’s history. As if this weren’t enough of a blessing for Pittsburgh to have enjoyed over the past two-plus decades, what truly makes the city appreciate Crosby is that he is the rare great athlete whose character exceeds his on-ice impact and attributes. His kind gestures, generosity and down-to-earth behavior are more legendary, in Pittsburgh at least, than his actual hockey career.

Rick Tocchet, now the coach of the Philadelphia Flyers but formerly a successful Penguins assistant coach, once fittingly summed up Crosby:

“He is the perfect hockey player,” Tocchet said. “I think he might be the perfect person, too.”

At this point, really, the only remaining items left are determining Crosby’s place in hockey history and in Pittsburgh history.

Let’s keep in mind that he isn’t done. He told me in May in Switzerland that he’d like to play for a while longer. Crosby is about to enter his 22nd NHL season and, while he’s not one to concern himself with milestones, I suspect he’d like to play 25 seasons if his health allows. If he can manage that, he’ll certainly reach the 2,000-point plateau and probably around 750 goals.

In NHL history, there is the holy trinity of (in the order they arrived) Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. Argue about their places in history all you’d like. Old-timers will swear Orr was the greatest, that he changed the game and that no one could dictate a game’s conclusion like him. Most will say Gretzky and point at his incomparable numbers. Others will watch five minutes of Lemieux’s YouTube highlights and laugh at the notion that anyone was ever better.

Regardless of where you rank them, they’re the top three, and it’s hard to imagine anyone topping them. Maybe if Crosby wins the Stanley Cup again before he’s done, he’ll reach that historical class. Maybe if Connor McDavid ever wins it, he’ll reach it, too, because his pure skill is like nothing we’ve seen since Lemieux.

As things stand, it’s appropriate to rank Crosby No. 4 all-time. In 2023, The Athletic did just that — accurately, in my view. Comparing athletes from different eras is impossible, and some will make legitimate arguments for Rocket Richard, Gordie Howe, Alex Ovechkin, Jaromír Jágr, Nicklas Lidström or McDavid. It’s all perfectly fair. But if you combine hockey ability, impact, longevity, winning and international accomplishments, no player outside of the Holy Trinity surpasses Crosby. He is the most-hyped player in the history of the sport, and he lived up to all of it, and then some. He was brilliant at 18. He remains a force one year shy of 40. Even his biggest detractors — typically fans based in eastern Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. — will acknowledge him to be a top-10 player. His biggest supporters will vault him into the Orr-Gretzky-Lemieux category already.

The truth is usually in the middle, and that’s the case again here.

Given Crosby is about to become the longest-tenured athlete in Pittsburgh sports history, it’s fair to consider where he ranks locally. Pittsburgh might be a “small market,” but there’s nothing small about the talent here over the years.

Check out this list (as of Sept. 30, 2026, when the NHL season begins) of longest-tenured Pittsburgh athletes:

It’s pretty roundly accepted that Lemieux is the greatest athlete in Pittsburgh sports history. If you saw him play, you know. Consider what he overcame — cancer, a chronically bad back, a pathetic supporting cast in his first few seasons, an era that was considerably more violent and a league that had zero interest in protecting him — and it’s almost impossible to place anyone ahead of him. A Pittsburgh Mount Rushmore starts with him.

Roberto Clemente was probably No. 2 on the list at the end of the last century, and it wasn’t his death at 38 while delivering humanitarian aid that cemented it. It was his right arm and transcendent performance, at 37, in the 1971 World Series that moved him to the top of the pack until Lemieux came around.

The Steelers have produced dozens of stars. “Mean” Joe Greene, Ben Roethlisberger, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris — on and on and on. Take your pick. They should have a wing at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Still, I don’t think there’s one Steeler I’d rank ahead of Lemieux or Clemente.

Honus Wagner shouldn’t be forgotten, but he played more than 100 years ago, so it’s difficult to include him. There’s no video of him. Just stories and statistics.

So, what about Crosby?

I’d probably place him right in between Lemieux and Clemente. Clemente is the greatest right fielder ever, and his 1971 season — winning the Gold Glove and World Series MVP — sets him apart from most Pittsburgh athletes. But he was never considered the greatest player in baseball. Crosby was hockey’s undisputed greatest player for a decade.

Clemente was a truly great man who fought his entire life for equality and for the less fortunate. He talked the talk, and he ultimately gave his life trying to help people. Lemieux, meanwhile, has saved the Penguins franchise on multiple occasions and has generated millions of charitable dollars in Pittsburgh, including more than $40 million for cancer research from the Mario Lemieux Foundation. His 22 years as owner, Penguins employees will tell you, were the best time of their professional lives because he treated everyone with a special dignity. His loyalty to Pittsburgh is unmatched.

Then there’s Crosby, whose warmth and decency are omnipresent even in a sports world that seems to lose track of those attributes daily.

It’s a minor miracle that a city of any size would be blessed by Clemente and Lemieux within 30 years of each other. The biggest miracle yet might be that a third person would bring similar greatness as a player and person to little ol’ Pittsburgh, 21 years after Lemieux.

Crosby wants to play a few more years. He’s 39, and he’s won the Stanley Cup three times. He’s pretty much done it all. He owes Pittsburgh nothing. But if he wants to keep going, the city will savor every moment.

The Russian Football Union retains a vote in FIFA’s presidential elections despite its national teams currently being banned from competing in major international competitions.

FIFA, the world governing body, and its European counterpart UEFA banned the Russian national team from competing in 2022 after the country’s full invasion of Ukraine.

This, though, followed an initial attempt by FIFA to allow Russia to continue competing in World Cup qualifying if it changed its name and played matches on neutral grounds. Following fierce resistance from a number of European football associations — including Poland, who were due to play Russia in a World Cup qualification fixture — FIFA scaled up its response, banning Russia from the men’s World Cup in Qatar in 2022, as well as the men’s and women’s editions since. FIFA president Gianni Infantino eventually said that the organisation “condemns the use of force by Russia in Ukraine.”

However, FIFA did not revoke its membership, meaning Russian representatives are still able to attend FIFA Congress and cast a vote in presidential elections. It is the same situation at UEFA, but many of the most powerful European nations remain opposed to Russia being reintegrated into competitions. The RFU joined the dramatic UEFA call last week — after which UEFA issued a statement saying its 55 member associations unanimously opposed Infantino’s idea to sell a stake in FIFA competitions and events, threatening to boycott the World Cups, doubling down on that this week — but has not issued an individual view on the matter.

FIFA and Infantino’s proposal to sell a stake in the organization’s commercial and events operations was rejected by UEFA, of which Russia is a member. (Carl De Souza / AFP via Getty Images)

Infantino is currently standing unopposed in next spring’s election but is under huge pressure from many within UEFA and some within Concacaf and Asia after his failed plot. As such, every vote could be crucial in the calculations as to whether a rival candidate will stand and any eventual election, while Russia may still be able to bring a small bloc of countries along with it in geopolitical votes.

The RFU declined to say publicly to The Athletic whether it had endorsed Infantino for re-election. In February 2019, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a decree to award Infantino with the Order of Friendship due to the FIFA president’s “enormous contribution” to Russia’s World Cup a year earlier. The ceremony took place at the Kremlin in Moscow.

Upon receipt, Infantino said to Putin: “This is not the end; it is only the beginning of our fruitful cooperation and interaction. On behalf of the whole football world, which means four or five billion people across the globe, thank you very much.”

Russia hosted FIFA’s men’s World Cup in 2018, despite annexing the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and making incursions into the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014. The conflict meant that one of Ukraine’s biggest clubs, Shakhtar, was forced to leave its home stadium in Donetsk and play matches in safer areas of Ukraine. The FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup was subsequently held in Russia in 2021.

In 2023, FIFA and UEFA lifted bans on Russia Under-17 teams from participating in international tournaments across the men’s and women’s game, provided they competed as the “Football Union of Russia”, and in the absence of their national flag, their national anthem, their national-team kit and equipment, and played in neutral colours.

Earlier this year, Infantino appeared to suggest he was personally in favour of ending the ban on Russia. He was speaking during a period in which there have been calls for FIFA and UEFA to impose a similar ban on Israel over the war in Gaza, which have so far been resisted.

“We have to,” Infantino told Sky News when asked if he is going to explore lifting the ban. “Definitely. Because this ban has not achieved anything, it has just created more frustration and hatred.”

On the possibility of changing FIFA’s statutes to stop national teams being banned, Infantino said they “should actually never ban any country from playing football because of the acts of their political leaders.”

FIFA declined to comment on this story.

Somewhere in the Browns’ practice facility must be a brown needle and a thin piece of orange thread. For the last eight months, Jimmy Haslam has carefully been rolling the string between his thumb and forefinger, trying to ever so gently thread it through that narrow hole separating hope from sensibility.

Deep in his soul, as he stands on the practice field most days with his hands on his hips, I believe Haslam knows this team isn’t ready to challenge. But there are tickets to sell and a belief to cultivate within a weary fan base that is tired of him overpromising and underdelivering. He oscillates between the yin of another losing season and the yang of a fight promoter trying to sell out the arena. So it was again last week when Haslam was asked a question about high expectations for this season.

“I don’t know about high expectations,” he said. “Let’s say improved expectations.”

I’ve certainly been hard on Haslam at times over the years, but let’s be reasonable. I believe he tries his best to be transparent as much as possible — sometimes to his own detriment, such as calling the Deshaun Watson trade a swing and a miss. It was absolutely accurate and the perfect description, but it makes things awkward when the biggest strikeout in NFL history is back under center trying to swing the bat again this summer.

He is also the only owner in town who regularly meets with the media. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert hasn’t held an open press availability since his stroke in 2019, and Guardians owner Paul Dolan would rather pay Tarik Skubal than answer questions from reporters.

That leaves the Haslams, who at least twice every calendar year meet with reporters and account for the mess they’ve made. They’re trying earnestly to clean it up and I’ll give them credit for the progress they’ve made the last couple of years.

When Watson was carted off the field three years ago, everything changed. It was already apparent even before the Achilles tear that Watson was never going to be the quarterback the Browns envisioned when they traded for him and gave him that contract, but the career-altering injury demanded an immediate pivot within the organization. Whatever flimsy contention window they had created with players like Nick Chubb, Denzel Ward, Myles Garrett and Joel Bitonio had closed. It was time to start over.

Whether it’s the Haslams, general manager Andrew Berry or a combination of all of them, there has been a bit of a culture shift at work ever since.

Trading away Myles Garrett was a crucial step. Garrett is a phenomenal talent. He is 1 of 1 as a defensive end, and I won’t be shocked if he makes another run at his own sack record this year in Los Angeles. With a head coach like Sean McVay and a quarterback like Matthew Stafford, Garrett’s role in the Rams’ locker room may be different than what the Browns desperately needed him to provide. I wrote when they extended him last year that they should’ve instead traded him. Part of the reasoning for it was the poor locker room culture he helped foster.

After the Browns selected Spencer Fano in the first round this year, one player who knows Garrett well joked with me that Fano would have to survive Garrett in training camp, that Garrett would take great delight in trying to crush his confidence every day. Juxtapose that against the clips of Jared Verse working with Fano on his footwork and hand technique earlier this week after practice.

“That’s really cool,” coach Todd Monken said of Verse’s impromptu tutoring session. “I walked up to Jared and said, ‘Man, we’re so lucky you’re a Brown.’”

The Browns need more leaders like Verse and Ward and Carson Schwesinger, truly excellent players who meet their obligations on and off the field every day.

But this team isn’t there yet. They’re one more draft class, and specifically a quarterback, away from legitimate conversations about competing for a wild card in the AFC. It’s hard to understand how Berry kept his job after burning down the building with the Watson fiasco, but I also give him credit for appearing to find so many useful fixtures in these last two drafts.

Mason Graham has looked unblockable at times in this camp. Schwesinger and Harold Fannin are on All-Pro trajectories, and Denzel Boston has shown some strong traits in camp. Fano should be the anchor of the offensive line for the next decade. Nearly all of them receive glowing reviews for their character and behavior on and off the field.

Watson mercifully comes off their books after this season (although they’ll still have another $80 million in dead cap hits to sort through) and then maybe this organization can start to breathe again.

Of course, nothing matters until they solve quarterback. I have no faith in any of these quarterbacks being the long-term solution, and Mike Sando’s quarterback tiers piece didn’t make things feel any better. Executives, coaches and coordinators from around the league ranked Watson 31st and Shedeur Sanders dead last at 35th. Given Watson’s struggles over the years and the way Sanders performed last season, there’s really no argument either should be much higher. That makes it difficult for any reasonable person to find much optimism for this season.

I thought Haslam had it exactly right when he said prior to last season it would take years to dig out of the Watson contract. I was confused by the pivot when they fired Kevin Stefanski and suddenly insisted this team should’ve won more than five games last season. I disagree. They were fortunate to even get to five.

Now that he has a new coach in place, Haslam seems to be reverting back to the more realistic plot point of where this team truly resides this summer. He doesn’t have high expectations, he has “improved” expectations. He called out the Vegas over/under line of 5 1/2 wins this year and advised fans to take the over.

That would be 6-11 and likely still within reach of a franchise quarterback in the first round of next year’s draft. The worst-case scenario is winning one or two meaningless games near the end of the season, as they did last year, to take themselves out of range of upgrading the most important position on the field.

For now, Haslam is trying feverishly to thread a delicate needle. It would be a pleasant change if the Browns can successfully execute it. For most of his ownership tenure, he just keeps poking himself in the thumb.